For a floor in better condition, you should get three P80 grit sheets. These numbers are for an average sized room, so if the room is exceptionally large, you should consider increasing the amount of sandpaper to four or five sheets.
Flooring professionals can sand away as much as 1/16 inches of wood with the coarsest paper. However, some engineered floors cannot sustain more than one heavy-duty sanding, as they may have a surface veneer of only twice that thickness. Refinishing these floors more than once poses a risk of wear-through.
If a floor is flat throughout and the purpose is to rejuvenate the floor, then in effect the sanding process is just removing the coating and some consider only up to 0.5mm of timber is removed.
If you're using both the electric sander and the edger in 140 square-foot floor space, it will take you roughly 5 hours to do three sanding passes. Another thing you must take into account is how old your house is. If yours is 50 years old or more, you'll need extra time to complete it.
An average-sized room (bedroom, lounge or hallway for instance) should take a day to sand and a further day to hand finish and varnish/wax or oil. However unforeseen circumstances such as repairs to the main body of the floor or the replacement of some boards may mean the job will take longer.
You want to give the new finish time to harden and cure. We recommend waiting a minimum of 24 hours before you walk on your floors– and 48 hours is even better. Start with socks only and keep pets off the floors for a few days.
There's really no getting around it – sanding your floors is hard work and physically tiring. What is this? When you first start sanding you'll almost instantly see a huge difference in your floor but once you've removed most of the varnish and dirt progress will seem so much slower.
Sanding solid hardwood normally costs $20 to $30 per square meter, without the application of a sealer or finish, while sanding engineered hardwood ranges around the $25 to $35 per square meter mark, without the application of a sealer or finish.
However, for some reason, some people still prefer sanding their floors by hand. They swear that sanding the floor by hand will provide you with flawless results. They consider sanding the floor by hand as a true form of craftsmanship, considering how detailed and more complex the whole job is.
Never use water to clean your newly-sanded hardwood floor. In fact, once they've been sanded, don't use any cleaning products for about 10 to 14 days. Once that time has passed, just use a soft brush to sweep them daily to keep on top of the dirt and dust that naturally occurs.
The Golden Rule of Sanding
The golden rule for choosing your sequence is to never skip more than 1 grit. For example, if you start with P80, and need to finish at P240, rather than using every grit from P80 – P220, you can do P80 – P120 – P180 – P240. This sequence cuts out P100, P150 and P220.
Is sanding your floors a DIY job or would I be better off getting a professional to do it? It's totally DIY-able, but be warned, it's really, really hard work. The sanders are really heavy and I just wouldn't have been able to lift the machine out of the car and into the house on my own.
If you have a 2mm wear layer, you can safely sand and refinish it one to two times, giving it an estimated lifespan of 30 to 40 years.
Turning the Floor sander on and off is done by pushing the buttons on the front of the handle, left is on and right is off. Make sure you have a good grip of the floor sander before you turn it on, as it will try and pull away from you.
This is recommended when the surface imperfections penetrate the finish and affect the bare wood underneath. Once you sand the surface of the floor too many times, you will reach out to the point when the floor is beyond sanding and it is already too thin. Continuing to sand the floor at this point is not recommended.
Well the simple fact is that hand sanding has many benefits over power sanding that can often be overlooked. Firstly, a final hand sand before finishing will always give a better finish than ending with a power sander as, no matter how fine a grit you use, there will always be scratch marks left by the power tool.
Orbital sander uses and advantages
Orbital sanders are best for floors that require a light to medium sanding. If you need to prep a floor for a new top coat of clear finish, an orbital sander is the right machine.
Floor sanding and polishing normally takes 3 days start to finish. However, the weather can make a big difference, so it's always wise to check on day three and allow an extra day if it's not quite dry. Next Stay in my home during floor sanding process? »
Hardwood flooring can be re-sanded up to 10 times, depending on how bad the floor is and how skilled the person doing the sanding is. It costs about $2.50 per square foot to refinish a floor, plus $50 an hour for patching and thresholds.
If you wish to ensure your floors are pristine, then having them sanded and polished every 5 – 7 years is the best way to achieve that. It general though, you can get away with having them done every 10 – 15 years.
Your floor needs to be sanded in stages with progressively finer abrasives for the best finish. Starting with grit 40, then grit 60 and finally grit 100 is tipically a good procedure for most wood floors. The goal with the first coarse abrasive is to remove the old surface coating and to flatten the surface.
You could then put in your flooring and fix up the baseboards before covering the floors and painting the walls. Sanding the floor first prevents damage from the sander and dust, and allows you to make any needed repairs before working on the final flooring.
Work the drum sander back and forth over 3- to 4-foot lengths. Use overlapping strokes by at least 1/3 the belt width to remove scratches. Start with coarse sandpaper of 36 to 40 grit, progress to a medium 60-grit paper and finish with a finer 100 grit.